


Old World Blues Aftermath

by shepardly



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, I tagged the relationship but honestly could be viewed as gen, M/M, Old World Blues, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 18:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17667563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shepardly/pseuds/shepardly
Summary: Basically what it says on the tin.Arcade is left at the Mojave Drive-In wondering what the hell happened, and fortunately has a hard time convincing himself to go all the way back to New Vegas.





	Old World Blues Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I caught the sad and it’s made writing difficult and slow lately, and I have an FO:4 story that I _actually_ wanted to make progress on, but this one wouldn’t leave me alone until I banged it out. I kinda thought it would be one that would just sit on my G Drive for forever but it has a beginning, middle, and end so I’m just gonna throw it on here and hope you enjoy it.

***

 

Arcade waited by the Mojave Drive-In until his food and water ran out, which ended up being around three days. The satellite that Rhys had leaned over to inspect before being whisked away had gone dormant, and nothing Arcade did would bring it back online so he could follow or bring him back.

 

He hadn’t felt this helpless in years, and he didn’t welcome the feeling.

 

***

 

On the morning of the third day, Arcade sat on top of one of the rusted out hulls of the abandoned cars and gazed out at the sunrise with his arms on his knees. It was almost peaceful, being the only one out here to witness it.

 

“Albert Rhys McKenna,” Arcade finally said to his empty surroundings, “I’m going to kill you myself when I find you.”

 

He headed north, no particular destination in mind yet, just hoping to come across a traveling merchant so he could stock up on supplies again. It wasn’t until he saw a towering, prehistoric hulk looming in the distance that he realized where his feet were taking him. But of course.

 

Boone would know what to do.

 

***

 

“What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” Boone asked. “Sounds like some sort of science mumbo-jumbo. Not my thing.”

 

Arcade rubbed at the incipient headache blooming in the center of his forehead. It was starting to look like Boone’s being posted out here in Novac was not quite as fortuitous as he had been hoping.

 

“I don’t know, don’t you military types have all the intel?” Arcade threw his hands out helplessly. “Any procedures for this type of stuff?”

 

Boone just looked at him, expression flat behind his sunglasses.

 

“Never mind.” Arcade sighed, and turned to leave.

 

“Gannon.” Boone called after him. He stopped in the doorway without turning around. “He’ll show up. He always does.”

 

***

 

The sun was setting, leaving long shadows in the lot beside the motel. While Rhys wouldn’t be particularly put off by traveling at night, Arcade was, especially on his own, so he headed for the motel room that Rhys had given him a key for.

 

Part of him must have still been hoping he’d shown up, because opening the door to an empty room made disappointment settle surprisingly heavily on him.

 

He locked the door and cleaned up as best he could in the mostly functioning bathroom before climbing into bed. He was tired from the walk and having roughed it for the last week or so, and the bed felt heavenly despite its sagging springs, but his brain was not letting sleep come as quickly as he wanted it to. The pillows still smelled faintly like Rhys, which didn’t help either.

 

Where was he? Was he okay? Did he need help? Would he come back here or was Arcade better off heading back to the Lucky 38?

 

Despite all these thoughts swirling his brain, his exhausted body finally overrode it and he slept.

 

***

 

“That’s just… no, that’s not how any of this works.” Arcade rubbed at his headache again and wondered if he should go find the sunglasses that he knew Rhys had stashed somewhere in his motel room. “Doctor” Straus squinted suspiciously at him, her eyes darting down to look at his lab coat before looking him in the face again.

 

“People say—” she began, but Arcade interrupted her.

 

“I don’t care what people say; a tomato juice bath is not going to help radiation poisoning.”

 

“People say it feels alright on the burns.” Straus finished anyway, sulkily. “As long as it’s with no salt.”

 

“Yes, I suppose a little relief before you die anyway would be comforting. Might even mask some of the smell for the people doing the burying.” Arcade said dryly. “You’re mixing up all this other crap anyway, you clearly have the set up for it, why not make more Radaway? Or Rad-X?”

 

“I lost my recipe for it, okay? And I always had people coming back complaining about my Rad-X too.” Straus sat back on her heels by the campfire, still sulking. Arcade sighed for what felt like the 100th time that afternoon.

 

“Look, if I give you the recipes and some tips for both, will you pick up on cooking it up again? And stop handing out terrible naturopathic advice?”

 

“Fine.” Straus grumbled reluctantly. Arcade looked heavenward and blew out a breath before getting to his feet.

 

“Good. I’ll be back when I’ve found some writing supplies to put it all down.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.” Straus waved him off.

 

As he headed back to the motel room, Arcade considered his situation. It was already day three of being in Novac, having arrived two nights ago. He kept thinking he’d move on, push towards New Vegas, either end up at the Lucky 38 or the Old Fort, but something always seemed to come up. His first morning here had come quickly, with Ranger Andy banging on his door before the sun was even properly rising. Cliff had tripped and fallen on the steps to his gift store, busting a cut on his cheekbone open and injuring his knee, and, being a small town, everyone already knew that Arcade was there and called on him rather than Doctor Ada Straus.

 

She hadn’t been impressed when she found out. The locals didn’t seem to particularly care what she thought, but Arcade saw the annoyed if not straight up disgusted looks they shot her, so he took it upon himself to learn what it was about Ada Straus’ doctoring that wasn’t working.

 

Which was why he was on day three of being in Novac and not even thinking of leaving quite yet. There was a lot to do.

 

It had nothing to do with waiting, hopefully, for Rhys to show up.

 

Arcade sighed. Maybe he should be thinking of moving on. Their base of operations _was_ the Lucky 38, after all.

 

***

 

Nearly two weeks later, and Arcade was still in Novac. Straus was now producing Radaway and Rad-X in higher quantities and quality, as well as Stimpacks and Med-X, and she was picking up more medical skills as she shadowed Arcade during any procedures he did. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was at the same level of qualification as her; he only had the advantage of living in the Old Fort and helping the real doctors there with their work, picking up and honing those skills on a certain disaster-magnet Courier. He never thought he’d say it, but he actually missed his plants some days.

 

Not that he’d go back to them willingly, at this point.

 

Arcade had noticed that Ada’s infrequent drug customers were still coming, but she offered to cure their addictions more often, at least when Arcade was around to hear. During all that, Cliff had healed up nicely, and Alice McBride was doing better after her bout of pneumonia as well. 

 

Arcade was beginning to run out of reasons to stick around.

 

He was dead asleep in bed when the motel door opened and stopped with a thud against the small chain that Arcade had secured before going to sleep, and someone muttered a muffled curse outside. Arcade startled badly enough at the initial sound that he nearly fell out of bed, flailing wildly.

 

“Who’s there?” He demanded, voice thick with sleep as he fumbled for his glasses. He had locked the door as well as chained it, hadn’t he?

 

“Arcade? That you?”

 

The voice outside sounded weary, but heart-achingly familiar. Arcade lunged at the door, slamming it shut so he could get the chain undone, and yanked it open again.

 

Rhys stood there, wavering on his feet, hand braced against the doorframe, his look of confusion morphing into one of happy relief. Arcade could only look at him, relief and horror warring inside. Rhys was a mess, by far outdoing the day Arcade had met him when he had limped into the Old Fort. Like that day, he was wearing a vault suit for some reason, but this time he had dirty bandages wrapped around his head and more peeked out from under the suit.

 

“Oh, it is you.” Rhys said, and his knees buckled. Arcade lunged forward and caught him under the arms, grabbing and hanging on tightly. Rhys’ head lolled against his neck, and Arcade realized he was burning with fever.

 

“Oh my god, Rhys. _Rhys._ What happened to you?” Arcade dragged his mostly limp form to the bed and helped him lay down, lifting his feet onto the bed for him before running to grab the first aid kit from the bathroom.

 

Rhys blinked heavily at the ceiling and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out and he had a full body-length shudder. Arcade was undoing the grimy bandages from around his head when he managed to speak.

 

“Got a feeling you don’t really wanna know.” Rhys grinned faintly at him, but it faded quickly. “And I can’t… I can’t talk about it.”

 

“Can’t or won’t?” Arcade asked distractedly, not really serious about the question but wanting to keep Rhys talking, keep him alert. The bandages were almost off. Oddly, Rhys’ normally thick brown hair wasn’t wreaking havoc with the bandages, almost like…

 

“Can’t.” Rhys whispered as the rest of the bandages came off, revealing his shaved head and the most horrifying scar that Arcade could have dreamed to find. He could only stare for a second, but he shook himself out of it and continued the examination, trying to stay professional.

 

It was hard.

 

The scar completely encircled Rhys’ head, looking as if some autodoc gone wrong had lifted the top of his skull off like it was some sort of cap. It deviated a bit around the old scars of where he had been shot in the head, but was otherwise a perfect line. It also looked like the incision had been opened _twice_ , faint marks slightly more healed showing here and there under the fresher one. Rhys scrunched his face up when Arcade slid his fingers under his neck, probing for more injuries, so he left it for the moment and turned his attention to the bandages under the vault suit. Rhys caught his hand as he started unzipping the vault suit, and Arcade looked up at him.

 

“It was bad.” Rhys licked his dry lips, closed his eyes for a moment before looking at Arcade again. “But I’m okay now. Okay?”

 

Arcade studied him for a moment before nodding, and Rhys squeezed his hand before letting go.

 

Arcade unzipped the vault suit, revealing more of the bandages, and reached for the scissors from the first aid kit to cut off the suit.

 

“No! No no, I’ll take it off,” Rhys immediately protested when he realized what Arcade wanted to do, moving to push himself up and gasping in pain at the movement.

 

“Rhys,” Arcade started.

 

“Please, ‘Cade, it was Doc’s, I can’t—”

 

Arcade briefly squeezed the bridge of his nose before helping Rhys sit up, letting him lean forward against him while pushing the vault suit off his shoulders and down his arms. Rhys flinched again when Arcade accidentally brushed against his neck.

 

“Let me see.” Arcade murmured, and Rhys shakily nodded.

 

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” Rhys repeated, sounding like a mantra, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

 

Arcade kept one arm pressed against Rhys’ chest while he carefully moved beside him to get a better look at his back. Rhys clung to the arm across his chest.

 

The scar that went around his head was joined at the base of his skull by another that continued in a perfect line down the length of his spine, disappearing under the bandages wrapped his chest and down into the vault suit that pooled around his waist.

 

The awareness that this was _Rhys_ that was bearing these horrific scars came rushing in close and personal, and Arcade struggled to shove it back to the professional distance. At least everything he had seen so far was healed shut and didn’t look to be infected. It was the dirty bandage around Rhys’ chest that was worrying him.

 

“It’s okay.” Arcade said, his voice only a bit strangled. “You can lay back, now.”

 

Rhys automatically started tilting back, still clinging to Arcade, and he helped him lie down again.

 

“I’m glad you’re here.” Rhys mumbled. “Sorry I’m such a mess.”

 

Arcade breached protocol and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

 

He used the scissors to cut the bandages and began to peel them off. They were stuck in a few places, making Rhys hiss and arch his back, but Arcade kept gently working on them with purified water and patience and soon had them off.

 

The scar here was something he’d only ever seen on cadavers. Not only that, but it wasn’t healing as cleanly as the others. Some sort of infection had taken residence in the line that crossed up towards his left collarbone, making the incision look irritated and inflamed under the crusted blood and pus, and it smelled terrible. Rhys kept his eyes shut tight, his nostrils flaring with each frantic breath.

 

Arcade carefully cleaned the incision and the area around it, murmuring apologies whenever he had to use the antiseptic that made Rhys startle and cry out. The area around his collarbone and the incision was badly bruised, enough that Arcade wondered if he had been hit with something hard enough to break the incision open and cause the complications. 

 

Once Arcade was satisfied with the clean-up job, he realized with sinking dread that there were still dark red lines visible under his skin, in the bruise and beyond, signs of spreading infection. Rhys was trembling a bit, clearly exhausted from the ordeal, but he waited quietly for Arcade to finish taping new, clean bandages into place and didn’t say anything as Arcade gave him a dose of Med-X for the pain.

 

“Get some sleep.” Arcade squeezed his hand. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

 

Rhys squeezed his hand back and closed his eyes, and within minutes his breathing had steadied and deepened in sleep. Arcade waited until he was positive Rhys was deeply asleep and not likely to waken soon before gently prying his hand free and going to the hotel door.

 

It was still sometime in the middle of the night, but the full moon was giving off enough light to cast shadows in the motel’s lot. Arcade crossed the lot and picked up a rock to hurl at Dinky’s head, which ended up bouncing off a giant fibreglass tooth with a _thwack_. A red beret and sunglasses emerged from the dinosaur’s mouth to scowl down at him, but the scowl quickly smoothed when he saw who it was down below.

 

“He’s back?” Boone demanded.

 

“Yeah, he tried to sneak into his room, didn’t realize I was there.” Arcade waved vaguely back towards the room. “Listen, he’s in bad shape, I need antibiotics, Stimpacks, whatever Straus has. Can you find her for me?”

 

“Yeah, alright.” Boone disappeared again with 100% less arguing than Arcade was expecting, which he was grateful for, and he was able to quickly return to the motel room. Rhys hadn’t moved, but his forehead was furrowed even as he slept and he had already collected another sheen of sweat despite Arcade having just cleaned him up. Arcade carefully tugged his boots and vault suit the rest of the way off, checking the rest of him for other injuries while he was at it, and found a badly bruised and scraped up but scabbed over knee, before pulling a blanket up over him.

 

Boone only performed a perfunctory knock at the door before pushing his way in, a large first aid kit held under one arm. Arcade motioned for him to stay quiet, and took the first aid kit with murmured thanks.

 

“What happened to him?” Boone actually looked appalled, probably the most animated Arcade had ever seen his face other than his infamous scowls, but he kept his voice down.

 

“I… I don’t know, exactly.” Arcade admitted, also quietly, as he sorted through what Straus had sent. “He tried to say something about it, but… I think someone did something to him. He said he can’t talk about it.”

 

“Bullshit, we gotta know who’d do—!”

 

“No, Boone, I mean I think he _can’t_ talk about it.” Arcade interrupted, gestured meaningfully at the scars on Rhys’ head. Boone considered that for a moment.

 

“That’s fucked up.”

 

“I know.” Arcade sighed. “I know.”

 

*

 

Rhys slept 18 hours, waking only momentarily a few times to drink the water and eat a few bites of whatever Arcade could push on him before going out like a light again. During that 18 hours, Arcade managed to get the infection under control with the scarily strong antibiotics that Straus had sent, and had applied a judicious amount of Stimpacks as well. The open-chest incision was looking much better and the ‘packs had healed it almost completely shut already. Arcade still kept it covered with clean bandages; for his sake or Rhys’, he wasn’t sure. Maybe both.

 

Boone checked in often, mostly to make sure that Arcade had everything he needed and that Rhys hadn’t kicked the bucket, which would be unexpected at this point, Arcade decided. The Courier was still running a low grade fever, but he was getting some of his colour back and he slept comfortably.

 

Arcade was dozing beside the bed when Rhys bolted upright with a strangled shout, startling him badly. Rhys was gasping for air like he’d run a marathon, unseeing eyes looking somewhere through the wall, his face twisted in a mask of terror.

 

“Hey, it’s okay.” Arcade pushed his glasses back up his nose and leaned into his line of vision, hands raised cautiously to show he wouldn’t hurt him. “It was just a nightmare. You’re in Novac. Boone’s just outside. You’re okay.”

 

Rhys grabbed at his chest and felt the bandages there, but his terrified expression had slowly turned to one of surprise, like something he had been expecting was missing, and he nodded frantically. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

 

Arcade cautiously sat on the edge of the bed, carefully looking Rhys over for any possible new damage. When he caught Rhys’ gaze, Rhys all but threw himself at him, grabbing him in a tight hug that Arcade was quick to return.

 

Rhys hugged him like he’d never let go. Arcade found he didn’t really mind.

 

“I… I want to tell you,” Rhys said shakily after a while and managed to let go long enough to lean over to reach for his pack, which Arcade quickly dragged closer so he didn’t fall off the bed, “but I— I can’t… they, they did something, here,” he tapped his temple, and shuddered before going still for a moment, his eyes going glassy as he seemed to get lost in thought. Arcade gently squeezed his hand, and he seemed to come back to himself before reaching into his pack and rummaging around until he found what he was looking for and pulled out what looked like an odd, shiny, laser detonator. “But I… I might be able to show you. Not— not today! But maybe someday.”

 

Arcade nodded, not trusting his voice entirely at the moment. Rhys settled back against the headboard of the bed, looking exhausted despite having just woken up.

 

“If you think it’d be for the best, then yes, of course, I’ll go with you to… wherever.” He motioned to the not-a-laser-detonator. “But if you don’t want to go back… well. I wouldn’t blame you. It looks like, whoever it was, did massive and extremely risky surgeries, and I’m assuming you didn’t give them permission for that.”

 

Rhys shook his head in confirmation and shuddered again.

 

“Anyone that makes _you_ do something you don’t want to shouldn’t be messed with, if possible.”

 

“You make me do things I don’t want to all the time.” Rhys complained.

 

“Because normal human beings _brush_ their teeth _regularly_ and so should you!” Arcade easily fired back, but he wouldn’t be distracted. “What I’m trying to say is, if you don’t want to have to face it again, you don’t have to. But if you need to, I’m there.”

 

Rhys gave him a watery smile. “Thanks, ‘Cade. I’ll… I’ll think about it.”

 

“Get some more sleep if you can, okay? You’re exhausted.” Arcade helped him settled down on the bed against the pillows again, making sure the blankets were covering him properly. Rhys blearily watched him, his blinks getting longer and slower. 

 

“Hey, Arcade?” Rhys finally asked sleepily.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“How was the movie that night? I really wanted to see it.”

 

“Go to sleep, Rhys.”

 

***


End file.
